Move over Marvel Comics, because there’s an even bigger publisher wide crossover for the undead planned, and it is coming your way this January from IDW Publishing! Today at New York City ComiCon the publisher announced the “INFESTATION” that will run from January through April 2011, and unite some of the publisher’s biggest brands including “G.I JOE”, “TRANSFORMERS”, “STAR TREK”, and even “GHOSTBUSTERS”! Inside you can find all the details on the announcement as well as a plethora of images from the series! Read on for the skinny!

“While line-wide crossovers are far from unusual, “Infestation” is quite different in that it draws in several IDW licenses, which adds a few hurdles from the business side of publishing. Waltz joked that IDW was able to overcome these obstacles with “bribes, blackmail, and booze” before confessing that, “seriously, when we first considered doing this, none of us at IDW really believed it would truly happen.”

“Initially, the thought process was that we wanted to do something cool that would draw attention to our own intellectual properties – ‘Zombies Vs. Robots,’ ‘Covert Vampiric Operations (CVO),’ etc. – but we knew that was an uphill battle from the get-go, as non-licensed properties aren’t exactly being embraced by the Direct Market these days, despite the fact that many of them deserve the same kind of audience the licensed properties possess,” Waltz said of “Infestation’s” origins. “The obvious solution, then, was to try and find a way to tie our I.P. into the broader audience our licensed books would provide, but how to get all those licenses on-board was the catch – we just didn’t see all the licensors going for such a crazy idea. But crazy never, ever stops us at IDW (I actually think crazy is part of the company credo. If not, it’s certainly part of the job description in IDW editorial). So, we all pulled together to come up with a plan that we eventually dubbed ‘Infestation’ – an insane mission that brings our IDW Universe and our licensed universes of ‘Transformers,’ ‘G.I. Joe,’ ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Ghostbusters’ together into one massive event, one where they all face a common foe – a true and dangerous threat that contains future ramifications for all the titles beyond just this initial event. We crossed our fingers (and toes and, in Andy Schmidt’s case, our Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow swords) and presented the plan to our licensors and, from the very start, have been absolutely flabbergasted by how supportive and excited they’ve been to be a part of our efforts from A to Z. To put it bluntly, without the licensors being as cool as hell and helpful as they’ve been, there’s no way ‘Infestation’ happens at all.”